


Kiss A Ginger

by SandraClegane



Series: Where the Cherwell Meets the Thames [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 11:45:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3172962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandraClegane/pseuds/SandraClegane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short One Shot - university student Sansa is fascinated by the strange grumpy man she sees every day.<br/>Modern AU, set in Oxford.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kiss A Ginger

As Sansa jumped out of the shower, she glanced at the clock on the windowsill. Ten to nine already! _Shit, shit, shit!_ She wasn’t usually late, but somehow this morning it had been especially hard to peel herself out of the warm comfort of her duvet.

Quickly, she dried herself off and got dressed; then, cursing her long hair, she tried to blow-dry it as fast as she could. Her hair still hang mostly damp around her face as she hurriedly put on a knitted hat and her coat, left her room, and grabbed her bike from the hallway.

 _Oh no, not now! Not today!_ Why was it that the one day she was running late, her bike had a puncture? Sighing, she left it in the building and walked at a fast pace through the grim and cold January air.

As a first year undergrad student, Sansa didn’t live ‘inside-walls’, but in a property on the High Street which was owned by her college. It was only a 5 minute walk, but just now, she could do without it! The High Street was already bustling, and her heart sank when she saw the bus stop. _Probably too late for that as well,_ she thought, _Unless his bus was late too._ She steered around the crowd gathered by the bus stop, still looking sideways just in case he was still there, when she collided with the large frame of a man.

“Oh, so sorry Sir, I…” she began, looking up, and her heart skipped a beat as her eyes locked with his. Under his cold grey stare, Sansa began to blush and she stepped back from the unintended embrace she had been in.

 

“Not on your bike today, girl?”

 

His voice was deep and husky; but this didn’t surprise her. Somehow, its gruffness seemed to match his demeanour and appearance.

 

“No, I, it had a puncture,” she stammered, looking at her feet; and then: “I’m late.”

 

“Won’t keep you then,” the tall man growled, and strode towards the bus, which had just arrived.

Sansa watched him get on, then shook her head and marched on. She was still red-faced and damp when she finally entered her professor’s room, and as quietly as she could slipped into the chair next to her friend Margaery.

“What happened?” Margaery whispered once Sansa had taken off her coat and hat, and sat ready with her pen and notepad. “Finally spoken to your crush?” – “He’s not my crush!” Sansa hissed back, “But yes, sort of. I ran into him at the bus stop. Like, literally ran into him.”

Margaery tried to stifle a giggle and smiled at her. “Oh Sansa, my lovely; just grow up a bit and ask him out.”

“I don’t want to ask him out! He’s not my crush, I don’t even know him! And he scares me! And I _am_ grown up!” Sansa agitatedly whispered back, turning even redder, if that was at all possible. She groaned inwardly as Margaery just gave her a knowing look, one eyebrow raised, and then tried to dedicate herself to the lecture.

She couldn’t quite stop her mind from wandering though. _Did he wait for me? - No, of course not, don’t be stupid. He was probably just running late too. What if I hadn’t mentioned I was late? What if I had said something clever and funny? Oh well, what-ifs won’t make this any better. He’ll just think I’m a silly little girl now._

She asked herself if she had been entirely honest when she’d told Margaery he wasn’t her ‘crush’…

It had been her first week at Magdalen College when they first met. If you could call it that. She had been on her bike, leisurly cycling towards her college and taking in all the details of her new environment, when she saw him walking towards her (well, towards the bus stop really). Her eyes widened in shock as she took in his hulking shape - he was huge; six foot ten maybe, or even six eleven; and heavily muscled. But what really made her stare was his face – gruesome burn scars covered the left side of his face, even his left ear was missing, though his left eye was still good. It was then that he raised his gaze and looked at her, saw her staring; his own eyes stormy grey and angry. Sansa had felt so ashamed that she had been caught staring, she quickly looked away as she cycled past him, blushing furiously, her heart hammering in her chest.

She had been scared of him – he didn’t look like someone you’d want to cross!- but also strangely intrigued. Who was this man, what had happened to him? Was he always this angry? The other half of his face didn’t look that bad; not strikingly handsome, but not ugly either. He had very masculine features, long, black hair; and his eyes would have been quite striking had it not been for the pent-up rage and contempt she had seen in them.

Ever since that initial meeting, Sansa had seen the man almost every single day. Their morning schedules seemed to overlap – he was walking to catch his bus while she made her way to college- and twice a week, on her way to The Folly, the restaurant where she waited tables, she would see him jogging around the park.

It was those times she saw him running that made Sansa nickname the mysterious burnt man ‘The Hound’ in her mind, as more days than not he wore a washed out yellow T-shirt with three black hounds on it for his workout.

Sansa let out a heavy sigh as she remembered that today’s bump-in had not even be the first embarrassing encounter they’d had. Once, she had been singing along loudly to a song on her iPod in a seemingly deserted stretch of the park she crossed to get to work, when she turned a corner and noticed him stretching behind a low wall. Another time, it had been a particularly nice evening, so she had happily chatted to the ducks on the Cherwell as the path took her along the river, when The Hound came jogging around the corner. For a man his size, he had an uncanny knack for materialising out of nowhere! All these encounters usually ended the same way – with Sansa blushing and staring at the ground, and the Hound giving her a sour look. Still, somehow she had started to look forward to their brief encounters; sometimes she dared herself to look him in the eyes for longer, or even to smile at him, to see if that would cheer him up.

 

And today was the first time they had exchanged words. Sansa felt a strange tingle in her stomach as she recalled the way his voice had sounded. _Get a grip!_ No, really, she didn’t have a crush on him. He wasn’t her type at all; and too old, he must be ten, if not fifteen years older than her.

 

Sansa managed to get through the rest of the day without thinking about the incident, until it was time to get ready for work.

She didn’t strictly speaking need to work; her parents had enough money to pay her tuition fees and she didn’t even have a student loan. But her dad was a man of principles, and had insisted that she took on a part time job – to learn the value of money, and to meet people from all walks of life, not just the hothouse that is Oxford University. At first, Sansa had resisted the idea. Who was she, to serve tea to some tourists?! Did she study the Classics just to clear other people’s dirty dishes away? But she had soon found that once she got off her high horse, the work was in fact quite enjoyable. She liked talking to people, to find out where they were from, what they were going to do; she liked observing them and watching their interactions and relationships. And people liked her, too – Sansa could never complain about her tips.

It was dark when she set out for her shift, and she pondered briefly whether she should walk along the roads rather than using the shortcut through the park, but she liked the quietness of the meadows after dark, so she turned south and walked past the Botanic Gardens towards the Cherwell.

Sansa was humming to herself as she reached the wooded part of the way by the river, when suddenly she thought she could hear footsteps. She stopped, listening – but there was no sound other than the rushing of the river, and the wind blowing through the creaking bare trees. She walked on, her body tense, and again she was sure she could hear something – someone – following.

Sansa’s knuckles went white as she gripped her handbag tightly. _It’s just this bit through the woods, then there’ll be open space again, it’s probably nothing, you’re just being paranoid._ Even so, she hastened her pace a bit, feeling goosebumps on her arms and neck.

Then it happened so quickly. She heard a twig snap behind her, and spun around; just in time to see a large shape emerging from the shadows. She could smell him, sweat mixed with sour wine breath, and suddenly his hands cupped her face, and she could feel his cruel mouth pressed down on her own. Before she even had time to react, he let go of her and ran away, back into the dark of the night.

In a daze, Sansa walked on, towards the lights of Christ Church college in the distance.

_What just happened? Did the Hound kiss me? Am I imagining things?_

All throughout her shift, Sansa kept mulling over the events in the park. It had been the Hound, she was sure of it: He was the only one tall enough, and she had felt the hardness of the burnt side of his face. But what exactly had been going on, and the reason why he did it, eluded her. _Does this mean he likes me?_

 

She was still wondering about it when she returned to her room, fishing some crumpled paper out of her coat pocket whilst she searched for her key. Once inside, she turned the lights on and tossed her coat and shoes aside. Then Sansa’s eyes fell on the bit of paper that had been in her coat pocket. Frowning, she picked it up. It was an article cut out of a newspaper. _I’m sure I didn’t put that in my coat._ She flattened it out, and read the headline:

 _“Pucker up! It’s Kiss A Ginger Day”,_ then it followed: _“_ _January 12th is (semi-)officially International Kiss A Ginger Day, which means every ginger person you come across on this day you must grab and plant a loving kiss onto immediately. Now in its 6 th year,…” _

Sansa noticed something was scribbled onto the margin. _“If I can’t do it today, when can I, eh?”_ someone had written in a spiky scrawl. Her heart began to beat faster, that strange, fluttery feeling in her stomach was back, and Sansa couldn’t help but smile. _It_ was _him! He really did kiss me!_

Just before Sansa fell asleep that night, a plan formed in her head…

 

The next morning, she got up early, and rifled through the local paper until she found the ad for The Folly she had been looking for. She cut it out, then wrote “8pm” on the side.

Skipping down the stairs from her room, she left her building twenty minutes earlier than usual, but she didn’t want to miss him this morning. Much to her surprise though, the Hound was already waiting at the bus stop. He looked up when she approached, and his eyes widened slightly; his customary grumpy scowl replaced by… sheepishness? Sansa wasn’t quite sure; but she was determined to see her plan through. Pretending not to have noticed him, she strode on and shouldered right into him.

“Oh, I’m ever so sorry, sir,” she muttered, acting surprised. The Hound just nodded, and she slipped away quickly, smiling. She hoped her hands had been deft enough, and he wouldn’t notice the little piece of paper she had put in his pocket straight away.

 

Sansa felt restless for the remainder of the day. She was sorely tempted to discuss everything with Margaery, but, biting her lip, decided against it, as she didn’t want to appear foolish in front of the older girl.

After her last session with her tutor, she raced back home, fixed her bike, and got ready for the evening. Sansa didn’t want to overdo it, so she chose a pair of cream skinny fit chinos and paired them with a blue v-neck jumper that brought out the colour of her eyes. She put on a bit of mascara and some pale lip gloss, and she was ready to go.

At the Folly, she was greeted by her boss. “Sansa, I didn’t know you’d be here today! Not your evening, is it?”

“No, I’m just, er, meeting a friend,” she replied; struck by the thought that this might not have been a grand idea. _What if he didn’t see the note? What if he doesn’t show up? I’ll look like a proper idiot in front of all of my colleagues!_ Maybe she should have chosen a random café, not the restaurant in which she worked.

 _Oh well, too late now._ Shrugging, she found a small table by one of the bay windows, and ordered nothing but a glass of water for now, just to be on the safe side. Sitting at the rustic wooden table, Sansa could overlook the now deserted river terrace and the Thames as well as the entrance. The restaurant wasn’t overly busy, only a few tables were occupied, and Sansa started to fidget and sip her water, nervously eyeing the door. _This was probably all a big mistake. Or a misunderstanding. He won’t come._ She checked her watch yet again – two minutes past eight – _Oh, this is hopeless, I should just go rather than make a fool of myself! –_ when a gust of cold air told her the door had been opened.

Sansa looked up and saw a large figure standing in the doorway. The Hound looked around, searching, until his eyes found hers, the corner of his lips twitched on the burnt side, and he smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> Naturally, I had meant to post this yesterday, but I only had time to write it today. And yes, Kiss A Ginger Day is really a thing!
> 
> Not sure how this turned out, comments are very welcome


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